


The Wife

by TheBasilRathbone



Category: Broadchurch, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (TV)
Genre: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller Are Best Friends, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Communication, Ellie Miller is a Troll, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, He Just Refuses to Admit It, Healthy Relationships, Just Married, Marriage, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:59:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29812932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBasilRathbone/pseuds/TheBasilRathbone
Summary: Hardy returns to Broadchurch after three years away with his daughter in tow and a new wedding ring. To no one's surprise, he doesn't reveal much at all about his new wife, wherever she is.Ellie, being a good friend and definitely not sticking her nose where it doesn't belong, decides to look into it.
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller, Hannah Baxter/Alec Hardy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	The Wife

She’s so surprised to see him back in Broadchurch after all this time that it takes her nearly two hours to notice the wedding ring.

After he’d left Broadchurch post-Sandbrook case, she’d heard absolutely nothing from him in the time since. So walking in on Monday morning to see him back at his desk like the last few years hadn’t happened was a shock, to say the least.

“Needed a change of scenery from Sandbrook,” he’d explained flippantly. “Daisy wanted to move, Broadchurch wanted me back, so. Came back.”

He’d lifted a hand to take a sip of tea, freezing at the sight of her wide eyes. Almost sheepishly, he set down the mug and brought his hand to his chest, spinning the gold ring around his finger. “Uh, yeah. S’new.”

“How new?”

“Few weeks. Was kind of…spontaneous, actually.”

Ellie had laughed, unsure of what else to do. “Tess…?”

Hardy had quickly shaken his head. “No. Christ, no. She’s, uh…a writer. She emailed me, she was writin’ an episode for some detective show on telly, wanted to ask me a few questions. I wasn’ gonna say yes, but Daisy told me she’d never speak to me again if I didn’. She has a book series that Dais loves. So I met her for coffee, an’…”

“And it went from there,” Ellie coos, ignoring his disgruntled look at the noise. “Well? When can I meet her? Bring her over for dinner one night!”

Hardy’s gaze went to stare out the window, as though unable to look her in the eye. “Can’t. Not yet, at least. We hadn’t…settled our living arrangements yet, an’ then the job in Broadchurch was so sudden…she’s still in London.”

“Oh.” To be entirely fair, Ellie would murder him if she had to live with him, but this was his wife for God’s sake. “Temporarily, though, right?”

After a moment, he nodded. “Yeah. She’s gotta put her place on the market, get herself sorted first. Marriage was a bit…spontaneous, after all. She’ll come eventually.”

He didn’t sound so sure, but Ellie knew better than to pry.

* * *

It wasn’t long before the CID was taking bets on whether or not Hardy’s new wife actually existed.

He always wore his wedding ring, she’d never seen him take it off, but weeks passed and there remained no sign of Hardy’s wife in Broadchurch.

The rumours had already begun swirling. That they’d already broken up, that it was all a ruse so people would stop prying into his personal life. But if it was a ruse, he was dedicated. He appeared every morning with the gold wedding band in place and an even fouler mood than when he’d left the office the night before.

His temper becomes shorter and more explosive, and as the designated Hardy-wrangler, Ellie starts to realize that keeping him under control is becoming a full-time job, and one that she has neither the time nor patience for.

“Seriously, Sir, I know you’re always a bit of a prick, but you nearly ripped Donovan’s head off in there. What the hell is going on with you?” Ellie half-slams a thermos into his side of the drink console, which he pointedly ignores in favour of examining something on his phone. It only makes her seethe more as she shifts the car into gear and reverses a bit too aggressively.

“Did you just call me a prick?”

“Don’t change the subject!” she snaps, and to her surprise, he actually does shut up. He’s quiet for so long, she actually glances over at him to make sure he hasn’t had a stroke, or something. But she only gets the back of his head, as he’s staring pointedly out the passenger window.

“Donovan was bein’ an idiot,” he finally says.

She snorts. “Not enough to deserve you tearing into him like that. What the hell is your problem?”

“Nothing!”

“Clearly it’s something! You’ve been a arsehat for weeks, and it’s getting very, very old. Tell me, or so help me God...”

He sighs. “I jus’...miss my wife, Miller. That’s all.”

When he offers nothing else, she huffs. “Where is she?”

“She’s been away on a book tour for five weeks, an’ then we started this case. I haven’ seen my own bloody wife in almost two months.”

“Two months,” Ellie repeats, heart sinking a bit for him. She wasn’t sure that she had ever spent more than a few days apart from Joe while they were married. “You’re not even two hours away by train.”

“I know that,” he groans. “Just…complicated.”

“Complicated how? Are things not going well between you?”

Ellie pointedly ignores the look he shoots her, the one that says she’s prying far too much into his personal fortress of solitude.

“They’re not _not_ going well,” he finally says, reluctance in his voice. “I just…she doesn’ want to come to Broadchurch. She keeps saying she’ll sell the house, but then she doesn’, she’s always too busy, got too much goin’ on. She doesn’ want to be here, and I…I don’ want to be in London. I came here because I needed to get away from violent crimes and homicides, London would be a thousand times worse. An’ I hate the city. But if she refuses to come here...do I have a choice?”

It’s likely the longest string of phrases she’d ever heard from him at once. She knows, then, that he’s needed a friend, someone to talk to about this. About his fears for his marriage.

“Do you want to still be with her? I mean, you said it was spontaneous. Was it…too spontaneous?”

She’s surprised at the speed he shakes his head. “Course I do. She’s my wife. I don’t regret marryin’ her, it’s just…gettin’ harder and harder to ignore the fact that she regrets marryin’ me. An’ who can blame her, really?”

“C’mon, that’s not fair.” They’ve arrived at the witness’s flat, but she only pulls into the lot and throws the car into park, not so much as turning the vehicle off, lest it startle Hardy out of his weird sharing state and clams him up again. “You said she’s got her own place in London and doesn’t want to sell it. Maybe she just likes London as much as you hate it and doesn’t like the thought of leaving. I don’t get it either, but Londoners are Londoners, there’s no changing their minds.”

He huffs. “So what, I uproot Daisy again, move to London? I barely see her enough as it is, I’ll never see her at all, if I’m working in a city that size. I’ll never see ‘er, I’ll be workin’ myself to an early grave. It’ll be my marriage to Tess all over again.”

“Just shut up for a minute,” she bulldozes, cutting off his self-pitying ramble. “You said she owns her place, yeah? She’s clearly doing well enough for that. So why does she have to sell? If you can afford to keep two places, why don’t you? She can spend some time in Broadchurch and take the train up to London for a few days if she’s got work or something to do up there. Why does it have to be all or nothing?”

Hardy shakes his head again. “What, we’d be livin’ apart half the time? Not exactly the foundation of a marriage, is it?”

“What, a traditional marriage like you and Tess?” Ellie fires back. “Or me and Joe? Or Mark and Beth? Look how all of that turned out. Dating at our age is hard fucking work. It isn’t like in your twenties. You’ve got two fully-formed lives that you’re trying to cram together like puzzle pieces that don’t really fit. If it works for her and works for you and you’re both happy, then who fucking cares?”

He gives her a suspicious look. “Do you really think that, or is it shit advice yer just givin’ to make me feel better?”

“Please,” she scoffs. “When have I ever been voluntarily nice to you?”

* * *

The sight of her is still enough to take his breath away.

She’s just wearing jeans and a jumper, one of his jumpers, but she beams at the sight of him and his heart nearly stops. Dangerous for a man in his condition.

“Alec!” she breathes, and when there’s no panicked look on her face, no guilt, noinstinctive glance behind her into the house to ensure there isn’t anything around that she doesn’t want him to see, he feels himself relaxing.

“I…brought wine,” is all he manages to get out, but Hannah is already chuckling, taking the bottle and setting it on the entryway table. “This a bad time?”

“Never a bad time. And we’ll drink this afterwards.”

She pushes his coat from his shoulders and tugs his scarf from his neck, and suddenly they’re kissing, Hannah’s thin fingers already at the button of his trousers.

He knows he won’t last, so he uses his fingers and mouth on her first, and by the time she’s trembling underneath him, it’s all he can do to give her a few moments to recover.

He’s clumsy, fumbling a bit with eagerness and lust, but Hannah doesn’t seem to mind. She never seems to mind much, in bed. Perhaps endless patience was a trait picked up from her previous profession. She’d managed to pry all of his insecurities and sexual discomforts out of him in a startlingly short period of time, especially for a man who is quite happy to be reserved and standoffish. Within a few months, she was listening to him confess feelings and anxieties he didn’t know he harboured.

One of their first few times in bed together had been just after he’d closed a big case. He hadn’t slept for nearly thirty-six hours and was surviving on coffee and toast, but things had been going so tentatively well between them that he couldn’t bring himself to risk cancelling. It was a recipe for disaster, and he’d been too tired to keep himself in check, spilling into her without warning long before she’d come close to it herself. But she’d only brushed off his humiliation and profuse apologies and guided his fingers down between her legs. If Tess had been in a foul mood, even if he’d lasted long enough and she’d been close herself, she would have rolled her eyes and pushed him away, turning her back pointedly to him in bed, refusing any of his attempts to try and coax her back, the guilt she had ensured seemingly more satisfying to her than any orgasm he could have given her. Alec had asked for forgiveness again the next morning, waiting for a passive aggressive silence or disappointed look, but Hannah only wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and gently scolded him for not telling her he’d been so exhausted. She would have taken better care of him, if she’d known. He wasn’t sure how she could have.

But he’s not exhausted now. He’s been vibrating with energy the whole train ride up, and Hannah, thank God, seems equally as pleased to see him. He must be making ridiculous sounds, grunting on top of her, but she only moans and sighs, gripping at his back and shoulders, urging him on.

The moment he collapses beside her, she rolls towards him, throwing an arm and leg around him, kissing his bare chest and then resting her temple on the same spot. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“Not as much as I’ve missed you,” he croaks out, pulling his chin to his chest so he can kiss the top of her head, the arm trapped beneath her reaching out to play with her hair. “I hope it wasn’…inconvenient, me comin’ here. I shoulda rang ahead, I just…missed you.”

“No, it was fantastic. I love surprises.” She twists in his grip so she can kiss him properly. “I’m sorry it’s been so long. Really. I know I said I’d visit, just the book thing got out of hand.”

He nearly backs down, but Miller’s words ring in his head and he knows it’ll torture him if he doesn’t say it. “I’ve been…afraid that you’ve been avoidin’ me. That you…don’ want to come to Broadchurch at all, even just for a visit.”

She looks heartbroken, but not guilty or sheepish. A good sign, he thinks. “Oh, Alec.” She’s tugs at his waist and shoulders, rearranging them until he’s in her arms, face buried under her jaw, her fingers stroking through his hair. “No, Love. That isn’t it at all. God, I’m sorry.”

“Tell me you don’t regret it,” he pleads softly, hands straying to brush the ring on her finger, the one he’d placed there only a few months before.

“Not visiting?”

“Marryin’ me.”

“Alec,” she breathes. “Of course I don’t regret it. God, Alec, why didn’t you just ring me? Or text me, if you felt this way? It isn’t you, it isn’t Broadchurch. I just…it’s hard to think about leaving London. Buying this place felt like such an achievement, still does, really. For all the…uncertainty, the trouble, the chaos that came with my old job, this really felt like my first real show of success. I wasn’t getting promoted, you know, I couldn’t brag to my parents about getting a bigger hourly rate. This place, in this city, it was the first tangible thing that I had, that I could really be unashamedly proud of. I’ve been dragging my feet putting it up for sale, and I’m sorry, but I will. I just needed a bit of time to adjust to the thought of it.”

Miller had been right. He fucking hates it when she’s right, but he’s glad for it, in this moment. “What if you keep the house?” he says at last, finally feeling the weight on his shoulders that he’d carried since their wedding day ease. “If we can afford it…keep it. You can…you can come down to Broadchurch and live with me, but you can keep your place here. Not a backup plan, just a…a place to stay when you’ve got to come up for a meeting. Or to visit your family, your friends.”

He feels more than hears the hitch in her breath, a sign that she’s teary-eyed. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to think that I’m…not committing. Or that I’ve got one foot out the door. Because as much as I loved my old job…I got tired of it. I outgrew it, got tired of being on the peripheral of everybody else’s lives without ever actually making an impact to anyone. I don’t want to fuck this up, Alec, because I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know how to be a wife.”

“I don’ care,” he vows. “Han, if yer not seein’ anybody else, if you promise me that you’re committed to this…you stayin’ in London once in a while is nothin’ to me.”

“I am,” she vows, sniffling. “I promise I am.”

They lay in silence for a long while, arms wrapped around one another, the distance and uncertainty between them finally falling away.

“Christmas is in a few weeks,” she says at last. “I’ve got the book thing finishing up, and got to pack up the stuff I want to take with me, but what if we…aim for Christmas? I can be moved in with you and Daisy and we can celebrate together?”

* * *

They’ve got three bets going by the time the Christmas party starts.

One, whether or not Alec’s elusive wife will finally make an appearance. Two, whether Driscoll has learned his lesson and won’t bring yet another idiot girlfriend in his revolving door of idiot girlfriends to embarrass him in front of his colleagues. Three, whether their sweet and obviously gay new receptionist will work up the courage to bring a male date even though he very carefully avoids using pronouns for ‘my partner’ at work.

Hardy has mostly managed to avoid the crowds, emerging for a obligatory glass of eggnog before feigning paperwork and disappearing inside his office again. As ten o’clock rolls around and there’s no wife in sight, it’s looking more and more like Ellie will be losing Bet #1. No date for Driscoll, either, by the looks of it, so that’s another twenty quid down the drain.

At least the receptionist has started to relax, now that he’s introduced his boyfriend to everyone in the office and Hardy, who he’s clearly terrified of, has only shaken his date’s hand and been as distantly cordial as he is to everybody. Hardy’s an arsehat, but he’s not a bigot.

It puts her in a good enough mood that on her way to the loo, she texts Tom to let him know she’ll be another couple of hours, and in doing so turns the corner and barrels into a woman rounding from the opposite direction.

She’s absolutely gorgeous and dressed far better than anyone here, and Ellie might actually be happy about checking Bet #2 off of her win list if their collision hadn’t knocked the blonde’s coffee back, leaving a mud-coloured stain down the front of her white silk blouse.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Ellie cries, and the woman gives a defeated sigh.

“No, no. Honestly, after the day I’ve had, I really should have expected it. Fuck. So much for a good first impression.”

“I’ve got a spare jumper at my desk, if you want to borrow it,” she offers meekly. “Not as nice as what you’re wearing, but it’s not completely horrid.”

“As long as it’s dry. Thank you so much.”

Ellie makes her way to her desk and back, tossing her jumper over the stall with the closed door. “It’s wool, hope it isn’t too warm.”

“Oh, God, I’m freezing cold. Being too warm sounds fantastic.”

Ellie hops up to sit on a dry spot on the counter to wait. The blonde emerges, her expensive coat slung over her arm and her gloves still on, though she’s flipped back the mitten portion to reveal the fingerless gloves underneath. The jumper, a bulky cable-knit, somehow still looks effortlessly chic on her, though the slim trousers and velvet stilettos don’t hurt. “I can’t thank you enough for this.”

“After I ruined your blouse? Least I can do.”

The blonde woman smiles, turning to the mirror and beginning to swipe under her eyes, as if a bit of smudged eyeliner has somehow made her not unbelievably stunning. “It was my fault, honestly. My meeting ran long, the train was delayed, the cab got a flat tire on the way here…it was like a comedy of errors. I’m one case of mistaken identity away from being a Shakespearean comedy.”

Ellie was fairly certain Driscoll’s last girlfriend couldn’t even spell ‘Shakespeare.’ He’d better hold onto this one.

The woman runs her fingers through her long hair and then sighs, an ‘it’s as good as it’s going to get’ sigh, and turns back to Ellie with a smile. “Do I look okay? Bit nervous, doing the whole…meeting the colleagues, thing.”

“Are you kidding? We’re a room full of cops. If you’ve showered and slept recently, you’ll look better than the vast majority of us. And don’t be nervous. We don’t bite.”

The woman gives her a grateful look, turning back to the mirror to check her makeup once more. “I know, it’s silly. I just…my family adores him, think he’s probably too good for me. It’d be nice to not be a massive disappointment to the people in his life, you know? Sorry, going off on you like this, I guess I’m a bit frazzled.”

“Really,” Ellie soothes. “It’s fine. I can pretty much guarantee you won’t be a disappointment.” Then, “bit surprised your family likes him so much, you know what he’s like.” Smarmy, cocky, smug.

The woman just laughs. “Yeah. Actually happened sooner than I’d’ve liked. Right at the beginning of seeing one another, I got a call while we were at dinner that my dad had a heart attack and was in hospital. I was a wreck. And he was so calm, he just paid for dinner and drove me to the hospital. He barely knew me, but he stayed with me all night, slept on a chair in the waiting room beside me. The doctors came in and talked to us, and he knew just what to ask, questions that we were too shell-shocked to even think of. He was such a hero in all of it. My mum hasn’t shut up about him since. Thank God it worked out between us, I think he’d be the measuring rod to all future men I ever dated.”

It was bizarre to think of smarmy Jason Driscoll swooping in and being such a pillar of support during a difficult time. But she has a fond, dreamy look on her face when she talks about him, so Ellie is hardly going to tear the guy apart in front of a woman who inexplicably adores him. Before she can ask any more questions, the loo door swings open and a small crowd enters, laughing too loudly and swarming the mirrors. “C’mon, you can keep your stuff at my desk. We’ll get you a cup of eggnog. The way Jerry makes it, you’ll forget you even had a blouse.”

The woman laughs, shoulders relaxing for the first time since she’d arrived and Ellie is immediately pleased with herself for putting her at ease.

“And you really don’t need to worry,” she tells her, guiding her through the Santa-hat-wearing crowds towards her desk. “You’re a vast improvement on the last one.”

“The last one?” the blonde asks, raising a brow.

Fuck. Did she not know that Driscoll was a swaggery little shit? “The last girlfriend, I mean.”

She goes a bit pale, at that, and Ellie knows she’s really put her foot in it, but she’s not sure why. “He’s…brought other women here?”

“I mean…not…it’s been a while. Not recently. I’m talking last year, at the Christmas party,” Ellie stammers, trying to dig herself out of the proverbial hole. The other woman’s brow only furrows.

“But…he didn’t work here last year.”

“Jason? Uh, yeah, he’s been here…Gosh, going on three years, I think.”

“Who’s Jason?”

Before Ellie can ask her what the hell is going on, they’re interrupted by a loud crash in the kitchen, followed by a swell of noise and alcohol-fuelled laughter. Trying to back out of the awkward situation she had created, Ellie reached out for her jacket.

“I’ll shove this into the coat closet. Grab yourself a drink, I’ll be back.”

The cupboard is so full she forced to wedge the jacket inside with her shoulder with so much effort that she misses the first few ‘ _psssts’_ aimed in her direction.

Eddie and Jane wave her over, huddled in the corner as they were, undoubtedly gossiping. “That’s Driscoll’s latest?” Eddie asks, nodding towards the blonde woman hovering a bit shyly by the punch bowl.

Ellie hesitates. “I thought so. Though she...I dunno. Doesn’t seem to know much about him. And she…I dunno.”

Jane snorts. “Yeah, because she’s known him for half a second before he dragged her along to try and impress his colleagues.”

“He’s done a damn good job of it this year. I was just taking with her in the loo, she’s a sweetheart. And pretty bright.”

“Ten quid says he fucks it up before the new year,” Eddie smirks. “What? She’s obviously too good for him.”

Ken from SOCO is already lingering, trying to strike up a conversation despite the poor woman’s polite but obvious disinterest.

“Driscoll better get over there before every man here tries to take a shot at her.”

Ellie grumbles a bit about Driscoll staking a claim on her like she was property, but any attempts to disapprove are quickly cut off by the opening of Hardy’s office door. He scans the crowd for an uncomfortable moment before leaving the safety of his office to join the crowd.

And he goes straight to where the woman is standing.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jane gaped as Hardy approached, hovering behind their guest at the punch bowl. “One good-looking blonde in here and even Shitface is making a move.”

“There’s no fucking way. Is Hardy even capable of being attracted to anyone? At all?” Eddie sniffs.

“He’s married,” Ellie says, which isn’t really an answer because she isn’t sure herself.

And yet the woman turns all of her polite focus from Ken to Hardy, a smile lighting up her face.

They seem to be speaking, Hardy not even looking stuffy and awkward as he filled a plastic cup with eggnog and handed it over the bowl to her. The blonde woman laughs, tossing her long hair over her shoulder in a way that could only be described as flirtatious. Holy shit.

“There’s no fucking way.” Eddie declares again. “There is no fucking way that _DI Hardy_ bags the hottest woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

Ellie wants to agree, but can’t do anything but stare as Hardy and the woman move together from opposite sides of the punch bowl, her slender arm slipping _under_ the hem of his suit jacket as she moves towards him to press a chaste kiss to his lips.

Hardy. _Hardy._ And only to add to Ellie’s confusion, the blonde indicates to her jumper and then turns, pointing in her direction and then waving. Shit.

“Two seconds in the buildin’ and yer already throwin’ drinks on people,” Hardy accuses as they make their way over.

She’s glad for the opportunity to be indignant instead of embarrassed. “It was an accident!” she protests. “And we ran into _each_ _other.”_

“She’s right,” the woman acknowledges, leaning in bump Hardy with her shoulder in a surprising show of familiarity. “It was all my fault. If it weren’t for her coming to my rescue, I’d look even more like a mess.”

Hardy shoots her a smug little smirk. “You look fine.”

“Fine,” she repeats, tossing her long hair over her shoulders with a false indignant huff, though she throws him a coy smile over her shoulder. “Don’t be so enthusiastic with your compliments, Love, you’re embarrassing me.”

This is clearly some sort of joke between them and not a criticism, because the corner of Alec’s mouth tugs upwards again, and he shoves his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Almost…sheepish? “Just glad yer finally here.”

“Well, I figured six months was fashionably late enough. Oh!” she releases Hardy and turns back to Ellie with a radiant smile. “I’m so sorry, I’m seriously out of it, so much for a good impression. I didn’t even ask your name. I’m Hannah.” She finally strips off the gloves to offer her hand to shake, revealing a wedding band on her ring finger. Oh, God. This was not another of Driscoll’s bimbos at all. This cheery, kind, stunningly gorgeous blonde was _Hardy’s wife._

“Uh, Ellie,” she stammers, too stunned to react (though the alcohol doesn’t help).

“Oh! Miller! It’s so nice to finally put a name to a face, Alec’s told me so much about you.”

“None of it good,” Hardy adds dryly, then excuses himself to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea (honestly! At a party!) while Hannah pulls off the gloves and tosses them onto Ellie’s desk.

She hasn’t said anything, she realizes, too busy staring at this woman who, somehow, married Hardy. She wants to ask again how they met, how it was that Hardy caught her eye, who’d asked whom out on their first date. The first thing that come out of her mouth, stupidly, is, “you’re not Driscoll’s date, then?”

The blonde woman shoots her a shy smile. “Driscoll? Is that the Jason you mentioned before?”

She nods, cheeks flushing. “God, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” the woman, Hannah, grins. “After you’ve come to my rescue?” Her smile dims for a moment, only a moment, and she says hesitantly, “I suppose it was Driscoll, not Alec, who brought a date here last Christmas?”

At that, Ellie goes bright red. “Oh my God, of course it was! No, Hardy wasn’t here last year. And the years he was here...my God, he was basically a monk. We’d have thought him vying for a sainthood, if he weren’t such an arse.”

She thinks she’s put her foot in it again, but Hannah only grins at her. “Well, I certainly hope he doesn’t mind that I’ve put him out of the running,.”

* * *

She stops by with her coffee and an extra croissant from the bake shop, a clearly identifiable ruse to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong, or so he would say. And does say, when he opens the door in his pajamas and dressing gown, glowering at her disapprovingly.

To say that Hannah had been a smashing success last night would be an enormous understatement. She had hung on Hardy’s arm all night, making small talk, laughing at jokes that really weren’t that funny, and generally putting people at ease. He’d barely said a word, as usual, but Ellie had never seen him so relaxed as he was with his arm around her, broad hand settled into the small of her back. She wasn’t sure how they fit, this beautifully refined younger woman and her scruffy, grumpy boss, but somehow they did. Hannah spent all evening happily at his side, beaming at him like he was the most brilliant man in the world, and Ellie could nearly see his grinchy heart grow three sizes right then and there.

“Miller…”

“Just came ‘round to chat about that new case. Look, I even brought breakfast.”

She held out the little paper bag with a smile, which he pointedly ignored.

“Can’t do anything until further until lab work comes back.”

“Oh. Well, then, guess I didn’t need to come after all. How’s your morning, then? Bet Brian is having a miserable one, he was so-“

“Piss off, Miller. I’m busy.”

“Oh! Speaking of the party, I have Hannah’s gloves. She left them on my desk thought I’d return them.” Hardy reaches out a hand to take them, but Ellie snatched them back with a grin. “Is she here, then? Oo, did she spend the _night?_ ”

“Yer askin’ if my _wife_ stayed the night?” he growls, though she pointedly ignores him.

“So...did she?”

“Alec?” Hannah comes around the corner, makeup-free and wearing a nightshirt and socks and still looking frustratingly gorgeous given how early it is in the morning. “Oh, Ellie!”

“Sorry about the early hour, just wanted to bring you back your gloves, you forgot them.”

Hardy glowers at her, but Hannah only beams. “Oh!Thank you. I’ve got your jumper, hold on. Daisy, I’ll be back! Watch that bacon like a hawk and ignore your dad if he says there’s no such thing as too crispy because he’s lying.”

Ellie can hear Daisy giggling from the kitchen, and even Alec’s grumpy expression softens at the sound. Ellie can’t help but wonder how Tess feels about Alec’s gorgeous, leggy, blonde new wife, one that Daisy clearly gets on with. She’d never had any particular issue with Tess while they worked on the Gillespie case, but she can’t imagine Tess is thrilled at how Alec has managed to land on his feet.

Hannah comes sliding out of the bedroom on her sock feet, gleefully handing over her neatly folded jumper. “Thank you again for saving my arse last night. Best to not embarrass myself too badly on my first night here.”

“Course. It’s so nice to finally meet you. Will we be seeing more of you?”“Finally moved in,” Hannah confirms. “I’ll be here for the most part, at least. I may be up in London here and there for work, but hoping not to have to go back until at least February. As much as I love the city at Christmas, it’s always so busy. It’ll be a nice holiday to have a bit of quiet time here.”

“Hannah!” Daisy shrieks from the kitchen. “It’s gonna burn!”

“Shit!” From behind, Hannah wraps her arms almost unthinkingly around Hardy’s waist, pressing a quick kiss to his shoulder blade before rushing back into the kitchen, giggles erupting from the other room as they fight to salvage breakfast.

“Well?” Hardy asks pointedly. “You’ve stuck yer nose where it doesn’t belong, are you satisfied?”

There’s no bite to his words, he’s just annoyed because he feels like he should be annoyed, in that moment. But he’s come home with his beautiful wife last night, woken up and made breakfast with his daughter. He finally has a home life where they’re not all at each other’s throats. Daisy sounds happy, a far cry from threatening to move back in with her mother. It’s not perfect, she knows it’s not perfect, but she’s known Hardy long enough to know that it’s better than it has been for a very long time.

“I like her,” Ellie says at last. “She’s nice.”

Hardy rolls his eyes, though she can see him stand a bit taller at the praise. “I’m aware of that, I married ‘er, didn’t I?” he drawls, as though he wasn’t pleased by her approval, the town’s approval, of his wife. As though he wasn’t comforted by Hannah being welcomed, feeling welcomed, in Broadchurch.

“God knows why she agreed. Prick.” She grinned, pulling the croissant from the bag and taking a bite. Hardy had a far better breakfast waiting for him than a half-smooshed pastry, anyway. “Pub soon?”

“Piss off, Miller.”


End file.
